2

We outgrew a few older external USB backup drives, and purchased WD My Passport 1 TB USB 3.0 drives to replace them.

When they are plugged into the front of our G4, it will blink forever after the BIOS (which is current, BTW) and never boot, even though the USB disks are not "bootable" per se.

Our old drives did not exhibit this behaviour (so I don't think it's this type of issue that I've read about other servers.) The old drives were USB 2.0, but this shouldn't make a difference, AFAICT--the specs say all of the G4's USB ports are the same, 2.0, anyway, so I'm not sure how one port would handle a USB 3.0 device better than another.

If we plug the new drives in one of the back slots, it boots fine.

What's the (most likely) cause? My concern is that the front USB port, and possibly the motherboard, might be starting to die.

(We are experiencing other strange issues with them, or were initially, like intermittent file permissions errors despite wide-open ACL on these local drives, but some serverfault users have me convinced they may be coincidental software/security related issues.)

Update: I found that there was a missing SES driver that Western Digital's site was able to provide. I installed this. After that, one of the two drives (which had had less problems so far) I could not get to prevent the server from rebooting using the front port. I plugged in the other one into the front port, which I had reformatted elsewhere, and it also allowed the server to boot. After reformatting again just for equal comparison and doing a backup--which this time had no issues--and restarting, however, the server would not boot with it plugged in. Since I am apparently getting a marked difference between the two drives, I'm wondering if one of the drives has an issue, although I do not exclude the possibility of the USB port or motherboard having issues. Another thing I noticed is that, contrary to the specs which only mention USB 2.0 for all 4 ports, in the BIOS's hardware list, there are 4 USB 1.1 lines and only 1 USB 2.0 line. That adds up to more than the total physical ports that I can see, unless there's an internal one like on a G5, so perhaps that doesn't mean that anything is necessarily running at 1.1.

Kev
  • 964
  • 4
  • 23
  • 46
  • What are you using USB drives on a server for anyway? Oh and I don't know if you know but USB 3 is WILDLY different from USB 1 and 2, there's a good degree of backward compatibility but there are limits and if sounds like you may have found one. – Chopper3 Jun 30 '13 at 21:33
  • For many reasons, for a backup dump. It's just strange that it's intermittent, if it's a compat issue. And it's not USB 1, it's 2.0, and 3.0 is supposed to be able to plug into a 2.0 port and function at "high" (one gen less than "super") speed just fine--in fact, that's about all you could do with 3.0 devices for the first year or two they were out, since mobos didn't even ship with ports for them. Plus that doesn't explain it seeming to work in the back ports. – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 21:57
  • I don't think it matters as to *why* one set of ports work and the others don't... It's not a good combination and is probably just an edge compatibility case that wasn't anticipated. – ewwhite Jun 30 '13 at 22:06
  • @ewwhite, well, my question matters to me. If it doesn't matter to you, that's okay. But I don't think that means it doesn't matter. Are you prone to throwing out servers at the first sign of trouble, even if you don't know what the cause is, or even whether it's a hardware or firmware or software issue? – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:21
  • @Kev No, I recognize that [the useful life of these machines](http://serverfault.com/a/279460/13325) is about 4-5 years. I'm in the middle of an HP motherboard replacement right now... 4 years. But your server is far older. Your resources get more limited as time goes on. – ewwhite Jun 30 '13 at 22:24
  • Useful is relative. Please just post useful information or experience if you have any in this area. I am not finding this dialogue very helpful. We have different assumptions, and I'm not in a position to change mine as radically as you would suggest, which, I must remind you, is tangential from my original question. – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:28
  • 2
    @Kev K. The motherboards failed at about 4-5 years for G3 servers. They typically went at 5 years for G4 300-series servers. – ewwhite Jun 30 '13 at 22:29
  • @ewwhite, thank you, that's useful. What were the typical symptoms of them going? Because this seemed to only crop up when we upgraded our backup drive, hence my search for some clarity as to what the actual issue is. – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:34
  • 1
    @Kev Always fan and DIMM errors first. Sensors, typically. The failure rate was high and replacement parts availability was low. Typically, the replacements had the same issues, so swapping a motherboard only bought time. HP never corrected many of the issues because they expected people to move to the next generation product. – ewwhite Jun 30 '13 at 22:42
  • I've known the same front panel USB issues to happen on desktops. I've also known some specific usb drives to cause similar issues on *some* systems and not others. Pondering switching systems to something more modern is a VERY good idea, limited resources or not. I'd rather a newer, more reliable system than a dead one. 9 years is pushing it for *any* hardware – Journeyman Geek Jul 01 '13 at 15:51
  • 1
    Um...if it is any consolation, my DL380 g6s and G7s do the same damn thing. Nothing worse than leaving a flash drive in to move a file around, go home, remotely reboot it and not have it come back up, only to drive back to the office and discover that the reason was a flash drive plugged into the front port. Mine does it every time though. I never bothered to find a workaround for it as I don't have any USB drives plugged in full time. The last time this happened was with an external 1TB USB drive I was using to restore a very old backup from. – MikeAWood Jul 09 '13 at 23:57
  • @MikeAWood, +1 and thanks for sharing your experience. – Kev Jul 10 '13 at 00:29
  • I had a chance to go reboot on of my g5s (we use them for dev and non critical operations). Turns out that the USB key was set as the second of 5 devices in the boot order after "CD-ROM". I don't think I ever changed this so it is very likely this is the default. You might want to check that out and move them lower (or higher rather) in the boot order so that the "Hard Drive C: (See Boot Controller Order)" option is selected before the "USB DriveKey (C:)" option. – MikeAWood Jul 10 '13 at 00:53
  • @MikeAWood, thanks, but that's one of the first things I checked. Not that I would understand how which USB port would make a difference, but in any case, HD was higher than USB. – Kev Jul 10 '13 at 01:06
  • @kKev, agreed it is strange. Wonder if it would be worth adding an off the shelf USB 3 controller to the server? At least them you might be able to take advantage of the faster transfer speeds. I suspect you might be stuck like others have suggested. Just curious, what File System did you use on the drives? I wonder if it would ignore an exFAT vs say NTFS? – MikeAWood Jul 10 '13 at 01:12
  • @MikeAWood, NTFS--I can't remember the details, but Win2K3 gives me an error trying to format it as exFAT. I'll have to pass on the controller. I just wanted to figure this out – Kev Jul 10 '13 at 01:17
  • 1
    @Kev, was the driver missing? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704 – MikeAWood Jul 10 '13 at 01:21

1 Answers1

5

It's a 9 year-old server... The DL380 G4 has been eclipsed by the G5, G6, G7 and now Gen8 systems. The model went end-of-life in 2006 or so. That's four jumps in processing and hardware technology.

Really, that's all there is to say. It's not a good platform to continue to troubleshoot or invest anything in. Why?

  • You are out of support!
  • The current BIOS you speak of is from 2007!
  • Replacement parts are also going to be old or of unknown status.
  • The street value of the server is so low ($50-$75US) that you could just buy a different chassis... but you shouldn't... because that would delay the move to more current hardware.

If you wish to continue using this system until it dies, use the rear USB ports. Don't depend on the front ports because they don't seem to work in this configuration.

See: HP Proliant DL380 G4 - Can this server still perform in 2011?

Community
  • 1
ewwhite
  • 194,921
  • 91
  • 434
  • 799
  • 1
    To the question ...USB 3 generally has a bigger power draw, and the headers on the front ports just don't have enough. The symptom is likely the system "waiting" for a device that'll never respond. I see this occur if I plug in my passport into my desktop's front ports. – Nathan C Jun 30 '13 at 21:44
  • @ewwhite, That's fine, and I am currently enacting a plan to transition away from relying this hardware, but at the moment, I am stuck with it. Also this doesn't really have much to do with my question. – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:00
  • @NathanC, so your front ports are USB 2.0? I've plugged a USB 3.0 external HD into a Win7 laptop's USB 2.0 ports many times without issues (besides running at 2.0 speed, obviously.) – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:01
  • 1
    @Kev But you have no recourse. It doesn't make sense to troubleshoot this. When you get to the point where you can't call HP, can't draw upon other experiences (because the server predates USB 3.0) and question the health of the hardware (motherboard), it's time to move on. – ewwhite Jun 30 '13 at 22:04
  • @ewwhite, I am asking what could cause this. If the only possible or probably cause is the motherboard dying, then I'm ready to move on. If the front USB can die independently from the back without further issue, I'm ready to ride out using the back ports as long as I can. If neither of these are actually the cause--e.g., WD drive has some issue, or I've neglected some BIOS setting that would help--then it's foolish to throw away a perfectly functional server. – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:07
  • 3
    Also, are small businesses on limited budgets not welcome here? Our budget rarely allows for current support. We buy off-lease and do the best with what we can. I'm asking for help with that, based on the experience of other users. I'm sure we're not the only ones with old servers out there, even that happens not to be you either. – Kev Jun 30 '13 at 22:25
  • 5
    @Kev What you are asking crosses the line from "limited budget" to professionally unsupportable. You can't reasonable provide any guarantee of functionality on hardware this old. Your time has value, and sinking more resources into an unsupportable platform is unprofessional, inefficient, and detrimental to the long term operations of the business you're supporting. I fully understand that your business may have accounting misunderstandings about sunk costs, total cost of ownership, or return on investment; but part of your job has to be understanding these and making proper recommendations. – Chris S Jul 01 '13 at 15:46
  • 1
    @ChrisS, so, basically, anybody who would be buying the products in ewwhite's link are to be shunned and their questions not even entertained here. Is there a serverfault lookalike for non-profits and educational labs and the like? Perhaps my question would be answerable there even if it's technically for business. You're making an awful lot of assumptions about me, my character, my job description, and the business I work for here, in response to a straightforward technical question. – Kev Jul 02 '13 at 01:37
  • 1
    @Kev, That's nearly the something you said to Ed; you're ignoring business logic and attempting to goad an answer. We're not shunning anyone. But the correct answer is *not* always the answer you think you're looking for. Sometimes the right answer is "don't do that". Non-profits, education, government all have specific measurable goals too, take a look at their *financial reports* sometime. Organizations don't exist for their own right, they exist to accomplish something. The purpose of your job is to support that goal. I'm sorry if your organization has put you in a different position. – Chris S Jul 02 '13 at 02:26
  • @ChrisS, you're again making assumptions. I've written financial reports for a non-profit, for minimum wage. You're thinking medium-to-large. Not all small, of the small scale I am talking, organizations always have the resources immediately at hand to accomplish what they would like to. What you and ewwhite are saying has merit, but one comment's worth, not hijacking the entire question. – Kev Jul 02 '13 at 12:33